


Iridescent

by Kitsune_Heart



Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Genre: Blanket Permission, F/M, Fluff, Love Confessions, Podfic Welcome, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:50:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitsune_Heart/pseuds/Kitsune_Heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the final battler against Opal Koboi, Artemis sinks into a coma. Upon awakening, he finds something inside of himself has changed. And something outside of himself, as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iridescent

When Artemis came out of his coma, he knew something was different.

For one thing, his head was _killing_ him. He had once broken his arm while on a mission with Holly, and the pain was roughly equivalent, this time simply focused on his skull. He was further irked to find the world black, and momentarily felt his pulse spike at the thought that this darkness and his headache could be connected. Blindness. But he raised his right hand and touched his face, finding it was encased in a gauze wrapping. Sensing this cover, he had kept his eyes closed as he awoke. Now he cracked open one lid, just enough to let in a sliver of light that had made its way through the thin wrapping. Not blind, but the pain is his head caused colors and lights flash across his vision at every small noise. He closed his eyes again, groaning.

"Butler?" he ventured, reaching out, waving his hand in the air.

Another hand caught it, but it was not large and powerful, instead small and delicate with long nails, though it held on just as fiercely as he would expect his guardian to clutch. "We're all here, Arty," the female whispered, and Artemis could envision the tears rolling down this woman's face.

"Mum?" Artemis whispered, voice raspy from disuse. How long had he been incapacitated?

"And your father and Butler," she clarified.

" _Everything_ is fine, Artemis," his bodyguard rumbled from somewhere at the foot of the bed.

Artemis let out a breath he did not know he had been holding. _Everything_. It all came back to him in a flash.

_Opal Koboi flinging aside Jayjay—the lemur screeching and bleeding freely from its skull—and about to inject herself with the final tincture needed to achieve her invincibility. Butler advancing on her, a gun in either hand, unloading clip after clip of bullets—gold, silver, armor piercing, hollow point—at the woman, each round pinging off her invisible shields without even causing her to flinch. Trouble Kelp screaming into his helmet, telling the entire LEP to 'ignore the trolls, Frond dammit!' Holly in Trouble's arms, her eyes closed, face highlighted by his blue magic, which coursed from his hand into a blackened hole in her chest. Then a flicker in Artemis's peripheral vision, turning to see the most massive bull troll imaginable coming down on him, it's great fist swinging back, throwing off a half-dozen fairies on the upstroke. Then down again. Then darkness._

"Everything, Butler?" Artemis cracked out, his mind refocusing on Holly's limp hand, her fingertips laying in a pool of her own blood.

" _Everything_. We're all here." Butler paused, then, grimly, went on. "Everyone...you care about."

Artemis let this seep in. It was no surprise that there were lives lost in the troll rampage. Opal Koboi had been mad to repeat her pheromone trick in downtown Atlantis, but dousing her accomplice—Turnball Root—had been the kind of inescapable genius that can only be accomplished in true madness. The sight of him running from the trolls, seeking the protection of the LEP, and then being torn into quarters right before the force's eyes accounted for at least one of the losses that Butler did not mention, and the others...perhaps it was selfish, but Artemis knew he would not care for the other losses. He pitied them, regretted their deaths, but if Butler's words were true, then his friends remained alive, and this was all he could ever care about.

Now his father spoke, his voice somewhere between Angeline's and Butler's in timbre, drawn higher by the stress of having his son incapacitated. "You've been in a coma for three days. The doctors thought you would wake up today. Someone should be in to see you soon."

True to Mr. Fowl's words, there was a sharp click and an extended creak as the recovery room's door opened. "Is everything all right? Is the patient...ah!" Artemis felt another presence enter the room, hesitating only a moment to pass by Butler and his father and come to the young man's side. "Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I see! You gave your nurse quite a turn this morning when she was changing your sheets."

Artemis did not want to play the invalid, so he took his hand from his mother's, pushing weakly at the mattress as he tried to sit up. The doctor made a sound of protest, but was overruled when Butler reached over and took the bed's controls in hand, shifting the mattress to a reclining position.

Artemis sighed as he settled back down. "Thank you, Butler." He gave his hand back to his mother, who began to stroke it soothingly. He wondered if she had been filled in on the full details of his latest adventure, or if it was up to him to provide a good excuse.

Artemis cleared his throat. "I...spoke? What did I say?"

The doctor was testing Artemis's reflexes—no doubt more to sooth his parents than to ascertain Artemis's health, which was done far more effectively though this chat—and scribbled on his chart. "I believe you told her the thread count on you sheets was a travesty, and to go find something above 400, preferably in blue."

Artemis shook his head, smirking. "I do like blue." When the doctor touched the side of Artemis's face, he hissed at the flash of pain that arose from the small brush, leaning away. Apparently, the troll strike had not been healed. Artemis did not want to know what his face looked like, but at least he would have that bit of color Holly had teased him about pursuing. It would just be the wrong color.

"Doctor, if you don't mind dropping your useless prattle and medical high-stepping, I really have only one concern." Artemis raised a hand to touch his wrappings. "Why are these here?"

The physician—no doubt appraised of his patient's irritating habit of knowing more than his caretaker—sighed. There was a tap as the charts were put down on a nearby table and a squeaking as a chair was pulled forward. Then a long silence followed by a deep breath—Artemis could imagine the doctor holding his hands clenched together over his mouth during the pause—before the explanation began. "You took quite a fall off your motorcycle, Mr. Fowl."

Artemis started. Motorcycle? Really, was that the best they could come up with to explain his injuries?

"Falling right on your head like that, and with no helmet. It should come as no surprise that we preformed a MRI and found...damage."

Artemis went cold. "Damage?"

"Yes. We detected some bruising on the cerebral cortex, mostly in the primary visual cortex, some on surrounding areas. We did what tests we could—gauging the reflexes of your eyes to light and so on—but were unable to identify anything _specifically_ wrong. You haven't complained of any loss of hearing or smell or touch, so the rest of your senses appear to be fine."

"Yes," Artemis agreed, moving his hand to snap at either side of his head. "Perfect, I believe."

"Excellent..." The doctor sounded skeptical, and Artemis was sure this meant weeks of evaluation. "The staff decided to bind your eyes when we realized you may be waking up, in case you awoke alone and...something was wrong. We did not want you to panic."

Artemis clenched at his mother's hand. "So you instead decided to let me go slowly mad with fear about my sight, while you promenade about, keeping my family in suspense?"

"No, that is not—"

"Remove these bandages at once!"

"Mr. Fowl—"

" _AT ONCE!_ "

Butler cleared his throat helpfully and ominously.

"Y-yes, certainly." The doctor shifted forward, untucking one end of the wrapping. Here he paused. "I advise you to keep your eyes closed, at first, and open them slowly. If there is something—"

"Doctor," Artemis Sr. broke in, removing all emotion from his words, just as he had once done with his criminal contacts. "I advise you to remove those bandages immediately, lest you need some for yourself."

Instead of responding verbally, and not bothering to be careful of the bruise that covered half of Artemis's head, the doctor unwound the cloth. He was done in a moment, chair squeaking away from the patient. "Just...slowly, Mr. Fowl," he admonished in a whisper.

Artemis did not let his eyes flash open, even if that was his desire. He began with just a slit, letting the little he could see that way process before opening wider. Then wider still. Then his eyes were completely open and he looked about the room, taking in the sight of his mother and father, their clothes crumpled, no doubt from sleeping in the hospital while he remained unconscious. Then Butler, who was crammed into hospital greens. His own suit was no doubt bloody and in shreds, accounting for the pastel attire. All silent. All tense. Most importantly, all healthy.

He let out a long, quiet breath. "Nothing is wr—"

Artemis's pupil's dilated in a flash of terror and he began to breath heavily.

"What!" Angeline gasped, joining him in fear. "What is wrong, Arty?"

When his son didn't respond, Artemis Sr. leaned forward, lightly shaking Artemis's shoulder, as if to break him out of a fit. "Arty, talk to us! What is it, so the doctor can help?"

Artemis licked his lips, reaching in front of his face as he spoke, finger splayed as he tried to catch phantoms in the air. "Colors...I..." He cleared his throat and tried again. "It appears there _was_ some sort of effect from the trauma. I can... _see_ sounds. As colors." Artemis knew that these bursts of pigmentation were a product of his mind—he had even managed to identify his condition before he spoke—but that did not keep his eyes from darting about to track the flares. The beeps and whirs of the equipment even now monitoring him (and marking his brief distress and return to calm) came out as grays and blacks, all quite small. His own voice was a rich blue, the shade alternating with the shifts between timbres, darker as he went lower, lighter as he had shrilled in his brief alarm. Angeline had been a soft violet, hiking up to near-white in panic.

It was the doctor who spoke next, and his fears seemed to have been submerged in the excitement of diagnosis. "That sounds like synes—"

"—thesia," Artemis finished at the same time as his equally-knowledgeable physician. "Sound-color, it appears." He glanced about the room until he caught sight of a motivational poster on the wall ("Time: It heals all wounds, with help"), studying it carefully. All of the text was in the same white, which was disappointing. A grapheme-color match would have been fascinating, especially if he studied its effects on the Gnommish characters he read so fluently. "Every voice has its own color."

The doctor looked fascinated. "A color for everyone?" he asked in a grey-green hue. "That's...odd. It should be shades for certain sounds and notes, not for individuals."

Butler chuckled, a vibrant green, like the Caribbean sea. "He _is_ unique."

While his son may have been enthusiastic, Fowl Sr. still appeared apprehensive. "This... _is_ a sign of brain trauma, though." Like Artemis, his voice was blue, but much darker, like the sky around a clear, full moon.

Slowly, the physician nodded. "Technically, yes. That hit he took to the head crossed a few wires, so to speak." As the former crime lord glowered, the doctor jumped ahead. "Most people lose this ability with time, and he is coping with it phenomenally! I want to run some more tests, of course, but...I think this may be your son's only side effect!" He patted the edge of Artemis's bed kindly; for any other patient, he would have patted his arm, but Butler's presences made that seem quite dangerous. "You are a phenomenally lucky man, Mr. Fowl. We call most motorcycle crash victims 'organ donors'!" He laughed, his colors rising to a sickly olive. "While you're awake, let's get those tests started, shall we?"

The evaluations came at him quickly. Artemis had some minor problems with his motor skills, but the doctor assured him that some simple recovery and physical therapy would allow him to return to ambidexterity and words of more than twelve syllables soon enough. In the meantime, he was left-handed and verbally dulled, but altogether not that bad, all things considered.

Three hours later, with the sun just beginning to sink outside his window, Artemis's eyelid's also began to droop. It was his mother who first noticed, and she became a jumble of fuchsia. "Arty, you look exhausted!" She turned to the nurses, barking at them in a dark and thick magenta. "He's been up for too long! He needs his rest!"

The nurses agreed in pastel pinks, blues, and greens, escorting the Fowl's back to the recovery room.

Mr. Fowl looked relieved at the closing of their visit. "I will be arranging your room for a proper recovery, so you can come home soon, Arty." Somewhat awkwardly—as if afraid that his suddenly frailer son would break—he held the boy close to his chest. "You'll be up to no go...to your old tricks in no time."

Resisting to urge to roll his eyes, as his mother could see him over is father's shoulder, Artemis patted the man's back. "No. I believe it is time for some new tricks, rest assured." Time for his next, Opal-less adventure. Hopefully one with fewer head injuries.

His parents left, ending the visit with promises to bring the twins and Juliet in the morning. There was no getting rid of Butler, however, but the bodyguard winked at his charge, announcing that he would keep watch in the hall, so Artemis could recover in private.

As Artemis had already concluded it would, the reason for Butler's absence arrived shortly (no pun intended, of course). Something thumped against his seventh-floor window, with no visible source. There was a flash of sparks on the pane's lock, which made a rather expensive-sounding crack before falling off the inside of the window and to the floor. The window slid open a few hand's breadths before coming against the second safety measure (a set of screws in the tracks), at which point there was some amber bursts of cursing. The window shook, and then there was a thump on the floor, followed by a half-dozen rapid taps. With a suddenness that made him jolt, Artemis's cot rocked and he found his lap full of sobbing fairy, a sheet of cam-foil falling to the foot of the bed.

"A-Artemis!" Holly choked, wrapping her arms around his chest. "Your mother just called to say I could come in!" She clutched at Artemis's sides—less bruised than his head, but still wince-inducing—and let her tears soak into his hospital gown. "Everyone ran out of magic! Even N° 1! We couldn't get you to wake up and I was so...so..." She looked up, face a broken mess of free-flowing tears. "I thought I'd lost you, this time! You didn't wake up for three days!"

"Shhh," Artemis said in a sky-blue that wrapped about the fairy. "I am quite all right. It's fine, Holly."

"It is _not_ fine!" Holly almost screeched in citrine. "Trouble used all of his magic on me and we couldn't do anything to help you. I feel so _useless_. I can't even heal your bruises until I perform the Ritual, and the full moon isn't for another _week_." She reached out to Artemis's cheek, the touch stinging, but the human did not flinch away. "I was supposed to be there."

Artemis gently took her hand from his screaming skin, holding the small fingers between his thumb and index. "It all went according to plan, more or less. This was the best outcome we could hope for. You don't always have to be my savior."

"Yes, I _do!_ " she screamed, grabbing the thin collar of his hospital gown. "Artemis, I...I should be there for you! I _have_ to be there for you!" She locked gazes with him, holding her breath as she fought to keep words in check. Then they exploded forth, her voice cracking. "Artemis, I love you!"

Artemis stared at Holly, sure his injured mind had supplied the words. But when the fear came to Holly's mixed eyes, he felt his heart begin to race. "You...feel...?"

Holly let go of Artemis's flimsy robe, backing down the bed. "I mean—"

Before she could escape, Artemis grabbed Holly's shoulders, pulling her up and crushing the elf to his chest. The burn of his bruises was swept away by her lips and tongue meeting his, her arms falling around his neck and tangling in his hair, the officer's entire body pressed against him as she realized what was happening and accepted it wholeheartedly. He blinked back tears, but not from joy or sorrow or any other emotion, for the great Artemis Fowl would not cry merely for a sublime moment such as this.

He pushed them back because, in the moment that Holly had looked at him and screamed "I love you" with no thoughts of holding back or later denying the confession, forever moving beyond friendship, her words had come out in a blinding flash of gold.


End file.
